


move like a panther, walk like a king

by CheapNightmares



Series: Life Beyond War [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, I've been struck dumb by the sheer amount of gay in this fic, M/M, oc charley by me on rotttnapple - also tumblr, original Grevious | Qymaen jai Sheelal interpretation by stealsaber on tumblr, short chapters but ya know, so uh warnings & mature tag for that just to be safe, the homoerotic undertones are REAL, this is so gay, violence is in the sparring match and qymaen goes FULL PREDATOR, when will I ever get better at tagging?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 04:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20615375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheapNightmares/pseuds/CheapNightmares
Summary: Charley asks to be taught how to fight, and Qymaen jai Sheelal forgets the fragility of humans.





	1. Parry. Thrust. Deflect.

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon-divergent, Grievous (Qymaen jai Sheelal) survives the duel with Obi-wan Kenobi and ends up on the remote planet of Jakku. This fic takes place sometime after those events.

Qymaen was sparring with the holograms again.  
The lightsabers purred and hummed as he parried, thrust, and sliced, cutting down the Jedi and their mindless clones one by one. His breath was low and steady behind his mask, eyes bright and blazing. Each step was a calculation, his movements a symphony of skill. He deflected an uppercut, swiping at the Jedi's legs only to be foiled as the hologram dodged the move. Qymaen growled, low, his movements quickening until the sabers were a blur of light and flashing sparks. Qymaen's form was upright, tall and proud, not the hunched and stomping man that usually prowled the ship. He was fluid, silken, his cybernetic body capable of movements beyond the restrictions of flesh and blood. He never tired, never faltered or flinched. The hologram, true to life in it's programming, misstepped and Qymaen attacked, ending it as his lightsaber cleaved it in two.  
“Computer.” Qymaen's commanding voice, only to be interrupted by a softer one speaking his name. The cyborg startled, seen in the way his frame abruptly tensed.  
“Qymaen?”  
Qymaen turned, eyes narrowing in question. It was Charles, of course. Qymaen had heard him talk often enough to know it was without looking at him. And there he was, sitting cross legged near the door with his fingers curled around his ankles.  
“Can you teach me?” Charley asks, and the question surprises Qymaen more than the interruption. The cyborg sheaths his sabers, four arms becoming two again. He holds the dual hilts easily in his hands and walks forward. Charley can understand why he is thought of as a demigod on Kalee, Qymaen moves like a king.  
“Teach you.” Qymaen repeats, looking down at the man. “How to fight?”  
“Yes.” Charley nods. He finally unfolds and stands, head tipped back so he can look Qymaen in his golden eyes. It makes his throat go dry, he resists the urge to lick his lips. “Please.”  
Qymaen is silent for what feels like an eternity to Charley, staring into those impossibly golden eyes. Finally the cyborg nods, turning away to set the lightsabers on a small table nearby. In their stead he takes up a set of thin rods, weighted and fitted with hilts. Sparring rods, Charles was far to green to be handling a real lightsaber in any situation. He gives one to Charles, motioning for him to follow him out into the floor.  
“What training do you possess?” Qymaen asks, turning the rod in his hand, adjusting to the feel of it. It had been a long time since he had handled something so...nonlethal.  
Charley only blinks at him, holding his own rod like he had not the slightest clue of what he was supposed to do with it.   
“Training? Like fight training? I usually just sort of...beaned the big guy with a rock and ran away.” He waves his rod around a bit, nearly clocking himself in the head before he tried a two handed approach. “Failing that, I just climbed something really high and waited for them to go away.”  
“I see.” Qymaen reaches out, first adjusting Charles' grip, spreading his feet, then dropping his shoulders. “Then you will learn.” The cyborg steps back, dropping into his own fighting stance.  
“I hope-”  
“Parry.” Qymaen interrupts, his eyes already gleaming with the thrill of the duel. The battle droids were hardly a challenge, but the cyborg missed the excitement of a live opponent.  
“Wait wh-”  
_THWACK!  
_Qymaen's rod comes down hard on Charley's unprotected flank. The cyborg is already moving, circling him. “Parry means to divert your enemy's blade. Again.”  
“You could've-” Charley catches Qymaen's strike again, but barely, the impact reverberating up his arm. “Lead with that.” But the cyborg isn't listening, watching him as he would a Jedi. Qymaen holding himself back, but barely. He could kill the human in an instant even with something as benign as a stick.  
_Parry. You're dead. Thrust. You left your right flank unprotected. Deflect. Dead again._ The commands came rapid fire, Charley missing far more than he caught in time. His body was half numb with landed hits, his footwork clumsy and yet Qymaen was still graceful as a dancer, lithe and perfect. Charley told himself it was the effort of trying to deflect the blows that was making him breathless.  
“Watch your feet.” Qymaen growls the command as Charley barely makes another clumsy attempt to catch the cyborg's rod, it catches his thigh and his knee nearly buckles from the force.  
“My wh-”  
His feet are gone from under him and Charley sees stars for a moment. Qymaen leans down, looming over him.  
“You are terrible. I was more capable as a child.” Qymaen states, holding a hand out to help him up.  
“Thank you. I'm learning a lot.” Charley replied, taking the cyborg's hand and pulling himself up.  
“In a battle you will not be allowed such courtesies.”  
Charley takes his stance again, the best as he can remember from Qymaen's earlier adjustments, his rod held two-handed. He glares at the man, lifting his chin, wild and defiant: “_Then don't allow me the courtesies._”  
Qymaen's mask hides his full expression but there is a shift, a darkening in those rare and beautiful eyes. The wooden hilt makes a faint crack as the cyborg's fine fingers tightened on it.  
_I'm in trouble,_ is the only thing Charley has time to think before they begin again.  
Qymaen attacks with a ferocity Charley had only seen when the cyborg dueled the holograms. The blows come so quick and sharp he hardly feels them when they land, can hardly _see_ them. Still Charley grits his teeth, doing his damnedest to catch what he could. Qymaen never seemed to have an opening, he never left an opportunity to strike back.  
_Then don't allow me the courtesies._ The words echo in Qymaen's mind as he presses Charles further and further back. Had he been holding a true lightsaber the human would be cut into unrecognizable mincemeat. There's a tally in the back of his mind of the blows he lands verses what Charles is able to catch. Prideful of his skill and talent, and for good reason: it was unmatched. Yet Charles refuses to yield, trying to match every strike even as he is forced across the floor. It's wonderful and infuriating all at once. Qymaen moves faster, harder. _He will yield. He __**will**__ yield.  
_**Crack.  
**Charley's left hand drops from the hilt of his rod, useless. There's a dull pain in his upper arm, a feeling he knows all too well and yet he doesn't want to stop. Bruised and broken and perhaps even bleeding in a few places there's a ferocity in his veins to match Qymaen's own. He doesn't want to _stop_, he doesn't want to _yield_, he wants to **win**. And in that moment, the smallest of possibilities. Qymaen's gaze flicks to the sudden drop of his hand and Charley puts all his strength into his right – not much now, admittedly, the cyborg has worn him down to the frayed edges of his endurance – and whacks his rod up the side of Qymaen's head.  
Charley is on the floor again in an instant, only this time he is pressed under Qymaen's weight and there's the faint, distant sensation of a few of his organic ribs cracking further from the pressure, several already distressed from the abuse they had taken.  
Qymaen is staring down at the man. This stupid, foolish, stubborn human who seemed determined to vex him at every available opportunity and yet seemed to have no intention of wandering off elsewhere. The act of simply flattening him was more instinctual than intentional in the heat of the moment. A critical strike, no matter the means, required an absolute assertion of control.  
Now he stared into the human's eyes, his own slitted, his breath a low growl in his throat. The only sound in the room.  
“Qymaen.” Charley finally manages, a breathless squeak. “My lungs.”  
That one small announcement made, and Charley passes out entirely.


	2. Humans Do Not Come With Replacement Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qymaen is scolded by EV-A4-D, he mulls over what Charley said.

Qymaen hunches on the stool that Charles had drug into the medical bay, arguing and digging in his heels until he got his way. All so that he could sit with cyborg when it was him on the table. Qymaen strokes his fingers through the human's fine hair, watching him sleep. Charles always came to sit with him in times of repair, holding his mechanical hand, in the very least speaking to him. Qymaen had found it alien at first, unwanted, yet Charles had persisted, insisting that it would help him heal faster no matter how many times the droid explained that Qymaen was _repaired_, not healed.  
Qymaen could not think of what he might say that would heal the human faster, but he did not stop threading his slender metal fingers through his hair, watching it part and fall away.  
EV-A4-D was busying himself with finishing the bandages, protecting cuts knitted together, repairs and wounded bones. One arm was bound in a cast. The droid had been sure to scold Qymaen thoroughly as he set the breaks and fixed other damages caused by their 'sparring'. Another thing EV-A4-D had been certain to denounce.  
“Master you nearly _killed _Charles.” The droid gives Qymaen a disapproving look, one of many he had already managed. “Humans are _fragile_. You cannot hit them so hard.”  
“Mm.” Qymaen grunts, pulling his gaze away from Charles to regard his medical droid. “If he dies. We will fix him. He requested that I not be so merciful.”  
“_I_ will fix him.” EV-A4-D's voice is impossibly dry. “Master, you should not listen to him. Humans do not come with replacement parts.”  
“There are plenty of humans in the galaxy for additional parts.” Qymaen replies, looking back to the man on the table. Charles had drifted in and out of consciousness as the cyborg carried him to the medical bay to be seen to by EV-A4-D. The droid was talking again – mostly, about how you could not just _remove_ the parts of other humans and attach them on like a mechanical leg – but Qymaen ignored him. Sometimes he wished he had programmed the droid with an off button. But that was unimportant, he was mulling over the strange, nonsensical things Charles had said.  
“_You walk like a king._” Charles had whispered and Qymaen nearly dropped him, so focused on getting the man to the medical droid he had not expected him to come out of his unconscious state. The cyborg looked down to see a woozy smile, half lidded eyes looking back at him.  
“_Move like a panther._” Charles whispered again and Qymaen stopped, briefly.  
“Go back to sleep.” Qymaen ordered, the man nodded, closed his eyes, and obeyed.  
Charles woke once again, more briefly, as EV-A4-D slipped a needle into his vein to give him a cocktail of medicines before he began to work.  
“_Did I win?_” Charles had asked. Qymaen had been unable to contain his snort of humor, the medical droid casting the first of many rebuking looks, and told the man _yes_ as he slipped away into a deeper sleep. Charles would not remember it anyways.  
“Walk like a king and move like a panther.” Qymaen murmured to himself, coiling a lock of hair and watching it spring back again. The man had been wet with sweat and his hair had since dried into wild discourse.  
“What was that?” The medical droid had gone silent, instead prodding at another darkening bruise.  
Qymaen gave him a hard look in return, “nothing.”  
“If you insist.” EV-A4-D returned, haughty. “There is nothing else do to but let him rest and heal. Will you be returning to your quarters, sir?”  
“No.” Qymaen's denial takes even the droid by surprise, the doctor looking at his master with mechanical bafflement.  
“I will remain here. Until he wakes.” Qymaen continues, the droid begins to protest and the cyborg silences him with a look.  
“Very well.” EV-A4-D muttered, moving off to tidy his medical bay instead of attempting to argue further with his master.  
_Walk like a king. Move like a panther._  
Qymaen makes a low, considering sound. For a time, he does not notice the ache in his lungs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Humans heal faster when they are comforted.


	3. Loth-Cat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cyborg in denial, a human on space drugs, and one very gossipy medical droid.

Charley did come-to again and the first thing out of his mouth was an incredibly informative: _ow._  
Qymaen withdrew his hand when the human began to stir, at last getting up off the little stool he had been perched on for hours now.  
He left a brief word with EV-A4-D: “Inform me of any changes.”  
Qymaen left the medical bay. One benefit of Charles' need for bed rest was the sudden abundance of peaceful silence in the ship. There was no chaotic noises coming from other sections, no running footsteps followed, more often than not, by crashes as Charles went careening or tripping into something or another. No sudden interruption of the human in his lap or the constant chattering-  
Qymaen realized that he hated it.  
He immediately disregarded the ridiculous notion. He was Qymaen jai Sheelal. General Grievous. He was the most feared Jedi hunter in the galaxy.  
He did not _miss_ things.  
And yet...

In the infirmary, Charley was trying not to giggle and failing horribly at it.  
“Did he_ really?_” Charley snickered, snorted, one hand laying over his aching ribs, stoned out of his mind on painkillers and still making himself hurt under his bandages. He had wanted to get up and leave as soon as he had been awake enough to realize that the ceiling of the medical bay was nothing but the most exceptional, most boring shade of grey he had ever seen; but EV-A4-D had cooled that down with mentioning that _Master Grievous _wanted him to recover for a while longer. Any further ideas of scooting out were crushed when the medical droid gave him another injection to offset the pain and left him in a mess of giggly fool in it's wake.  
“I wish I had been awake for that.” Charley giggled again, helpless not to. “Fuck that hurts.” He's grinning like an idiot when he says it, going back to his prior source of amusement: watching the medical droid putter about with busy work.  
“Oh yes. Master Grievous stayed the entire time you were asleep. He played with your hair. I believe he was attempting what you have referred to as 'comfort'.” EV-A4-D replied, precise, he would be smiling had his mechanical body been capable of it.  
“Stop, Doc Evee, that's too cute, I can't handle it.” Charley manages, breathless, grinning as he lifted the sheet the droid had put over him to get a look at his new war wounds. He couldn't move much beyond lifting his head and the arm free of a cast, his limbs felt like they had been replaced with jelly.  
“Hoo. Might've gone a little overboard sparring with Qymaen.”  
“Master Grievous nearly _killed_ you, Charles.” EV-A4-D replies, again reverting to his drier tone. “Close to eighty percent of your body has some form of damage. I recommend a minimum of two weeks of bed rest followed by-”  
“Did he really play with my hair the entire time, Doc Evee?” Charley interrupts the medical droid as easily as he had Qymaen in the past. It was a gift.  
EV-A4-D paused, staring at the human occupying the bed. He had less experience with Charles than Master Grievous. He was not yet equipped to deal with his. Enthusiasm. But he was never afforded the opportunity to...chat, either, certainly not about Master Grievous. The droid slides closer, his mechanical hands clasped together.  
“Well, from my observation he-”  
“He _what?_” Qymaen is the one interrupting this time, startling EV-A4-D and causing Charley to break out in another beaming, sunshine smile. The cyborg stares down the droid.  
“You were to inform me of any changes.” Qymaen intones. He had stalked to the medical bay again, just to be certain Charles had woken up completely. EV-A4-D had always followed direct orders, but Qymaen's health had been priority for all these years. The droid could be concerned about upsetting him and triggering an asthmatic attack. An unfounded concern, of course, Qymaen was not in the least worried about how the humane was faring after their sparring session today. He was merely. Ensuring there was not a problem.  
“Qymaen!”  
“Master Grievous. Ah.”  
The replies are nearly instantaneous. The droid taps his hands together, sliding away from his patient.  
“Charles is doing well. There was a small, unintended side effect of the medication but it is nothing concerning.” EV-A4-D manages a light chuckle, “I must polish my extractor. Excuse me. Goodbye.” The droid skitters away, leaving his master alone with his grinning patient. Qymaen looks at Charley in silence, expecting the human to break it, as he's prone to do. He doesn't.  
“You seem to be doing well.” Qymaen finally speaks. He considers simply leaving again and returning to the irritating amount of silence. Charles clearly needs no assistance, nor has he died.  
“You stayed with me the entire time I was sleep.” Charley pipes up, not answering the question. Qymaen narrows his eyes at the human, sighs.  
“Yes.”  
“And played with my hair.”  
“I did not.” Qymaen's denial is an immediate growl. Charles wiggles his eyebrows at him and Qymaen finds himself questioning, not for the first time, what this particular human action meant. He stops trying to understand and sits on the stool again, hunched.  
“Yes.” The cyborg coincides at last.  
“You're terrible at lying.” Charley would have scooted closer if he was able to move. Qymaen squints at him.  
“Yes.”  
“You're so _sweet_ Qymaen. Will you sign my cast?”  
“You are inebriated. Will I what?” Had the now-alien calm, the silence of the ship really been so bad? Charles' bizarrely outgoing personality seemed to have been amplified tenfold.  
“My cast.” Charley lifts one hand, managing, with some effort, to point at the stiff bandaging EV-A4-D had applied after setting the snapped bone. “You gotta sign it. It's the law. Somewhere. Look! Doc Evee signed it too.”  
Qymaen leans slightly closer. The medical droid appeared to have written a serial number on the bandage. When he looks up again at Charles, the man is already holding a pen. Qymaen takes it in silence, bending over the fresh cast on Charles' arm. When he feels the man attempting to shift and look before he's finished he issues a single grunt:  
“**No peeking.**”  
“Fine.” Charley settles back again, silent for all of a few seconds before he speaks up again. “Have you ever noticed how boring the ceiling in here is?”  
Qymaen's hand pauses momentarily, “no.”  
“Doc Evee should get some posters or something for it.” Charley muses, “you've really never noticed?”  
“I have never been incapacitated to the point of noticing the ceiling.” Qymaen replies, “EV-A4-D has always been efficient in completing his repairs in a timely manner.” And Charles had always been there, as of late, to distract him. Qymaen leans back again, replacing the cap on the pen.  
“You may look now.”  
Charley leans over to look with some effort, his body stiff with bandages and uncooperative with drugs. Qymaen waits, and when the man sees what he has drawn there on his cast - a loth-cat – he lights up in a smile, like the dawn breaking over the darkness of a still jungle.  
“I _love_ it Qymaen, thank you.” Charley's eyes are bright, sparkling with more than just the drugs the droid have given him. The cyborg shifts a little on his seat, stifling a cough politely in the shoulder of his cloak. Charley would have reached out, curled his fingers around Qymaen's slender metal ones, if he was able to move. He would have to settle for just...watching him. And stealing another look at the loth-cat Qymaen had drawn on his cast, it was finely detailed and grinning with good cheer.  
Charley spoke up, his voice soft and full of something Qymaen could not name, “will you stay with me for a little while? Please?”  
Qymaen had looked away, intent on taking his leave before Charles could start in with his arguments and protests, but when he looks back to the human there is no protest, no argument, only the most pitiful, pleading expression he had ever seen in the entirety of his life.  
“_Please?_” Charley asks again, Qymaen would have sworn the look he was giving him intensified. He made a silent, mental note to speak to EV-A4-D about what medications he gave to Charles.  
“Fine.” Qymaen finally relents and Charles' puppy eyes transform almost instantly into a sunny smile. Qymaen squinted at him as the man promptly diverted him with another question.  
“The terms you used, when we were sparring? Could you explain them? I want a rematch.”  
Qymaen disguised a chuckle in another cough, stifling it in the shoulder of his cloak again.  
“Yes, Charles. I can explain them.”

The hours slipped by like water in a cupped palm, and when Charles fell asleep again, Qymaen reached out and threaded his fingers through his fine blond hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loth-Cats are a sign of affection, in space.

**Author's Note:**

> Things not to say to Qymaen jai Sheelal: then don't allow me the courtesies


End file.
